It’s Black Friday at WWE with several Superstars released

It’s Black Friday at WWE today as 4 WWE Superstars have been released so far and more could be on the way out by the day is over. Those announced that have received the pink slip are Hornswoggle, Alex Riley, El Torito and Zeb Colter.

The 29 year old Hornswoggle, real name Dylan Postl, has been signed with WWE since 2006 and made his debut in May of that year under the name Little Bastard. Eventually the character evolved into Hornswoggle in early 2007, continuing his partnership with Finlay. In 2008 he was released as Vince McMahon’s illegitimate son in an angle that dragged on for a while and was originally planned for Mr Kennedy. In 2009, Hornswoggle joined D-Generation X for a while and a year later he was also revealed as the Anonymous Raw General Manager. He was suspended in September 2015 for failing the WWE Wellness Program and didn’t appear on television since then. He won the Cruiserweight title once during his WWE career.

Alex Riley has been with the WWE since 2007, first under a developmental deal and then making his debut on NXT with The Miz as his mentor. Most of his time in WWE, Riley spent his time shadowing The Miz and somewhat got his WrestleMania moment when he accompanied the then WWE champion The Miz for his match against John Cena at WrestleMania 27, interfering several times. He had a singles career in 2011 but wasn’t very successful in that position. He transitioned to a color commentator and worked on the Raw and Smackdown pre-show panels on the WWE Network for two years before returning to the ring at NXT in 2015. After a long time out due to an injury, the 35 year old returned to NXT in January of this year where he spent the remaining of his WWE days.

El Torito, now 34 years old, made his WWE debut in April 2013 slinging himself with the Los Matadores. He was an entrant in the 2014 Royal Rumble but was eliminated by Roman Reigns. At Extreme Rules that same year, he participated in the first ever WeeLC match against Hornswoggle after the two had a feud involving Los Matadores and 3MB. He has not appeared on WWE TV since Los Matadores were taken out to be repackaged.

Zeb Colter, who many know as Dutch Mantel, returned to the WWE in 2013 as the manager of Jack Swagger, portraying a character who advocated against illegal immigration and was created following the Tea Party movement. After a feud between Swagger and Rusev, Colter was written off TV and returned at Hell In A Cell 2015 as the manager of Alberto Del Rio, who had just returned himself. The two parted ways in December of that same year and Colter never appeared on TV again.